Greetings. Despite popular demand, another mechanical missive follows.
"So how big are stick insects, anyway?" I asked. And, as Martin's reply was not altogether precise, I finished up making a cage strong enough and big enough to hold a demented hen, and In due course it became inhabited by two shy, diminutive Things whose combined strength would hardly lift a sheet of paper. But Chop and Chip, in their vast den of private privet, seem very happy, and latest intelligence suggests they may be going to shed their next skin soon.
What a good idea that there should be insects that enjoy privet. All we need to do now is breed a variety hardy enough to survive the British summer, and hedge clippers could be a thing of the past. After that, we'll see about breeding an automatic, biological, self-governing lawn trimmer.
To start at the beginning of the year since our last mass missive, our worries then were which school should Owen go to. After vastly lengthy in-depth investigation we made our choice, and off went Owen, larking away, while we patted each other's backs. Took all of a week for Owen to decide he hated it and wanted to go to a different one. Never mind: he's on the waiting list for a change, and in the meantime he brings home the occasional custard-yellow Commendation Card for things like finding a Yery Long Word in the dictionary or for a poster in the style of Judge Dredd.
What! you don't know about J.D. ?! The comic hero of "2000 AD", where the readers' letters are addressed to The Tharg, and start "Oh Great Green One"? The judge with the motor-bike like what you've never seen before? What a grexnix you must be.
Thos, too, has started a new life, but more successfully. He's working 8O% at Rank Xerox's new lab in Cambridge, discovering the industrial life, with its pro's (small keen group) and its con's (all my friends think I've gone right-wing). Wall-to-wall carpet and designer windows I can't reach to open. I like it. So far. And Jo has been promoted to be a member of University Senate, not to mention being 2O% of the Psychology Research Ethics Committee and therefore able to halt her husband's research any day she likes. In between these the research goes well - but the money is still soft.
Thos also lucky enough to get a working visit to Guelph, in Canada, which paid for us all to go. Guelph is a small quiet town, where it took me a whole week to find out how to get a drink, because the local liquor laws have been framed very carefully indeed. At the end I wrote a little something to thank all my friends there - a mumming play, filled with deeply obscure puns about their research topics. Looking at it now, I'm not surprised they were a bit baffled, and not only because no-one in Canada had ever heard of mumming. Rumour has It that they're salting it away for PhD theses when I'm dead and Finnegan's Wake has been sucked dry. Then everyone else came over to spend a fortnight with friends visiting the sights of Southern South Ontario. We all visited the famous open-space zoo on the hottest day of the year to find the animals lying panting, and the also-famous Science Centre where they stood our hair on end with static electricity, and the also-famous Royal Ontario Museum with its vast and peaceful Henry Moores now photographed and living in our Loovre (the downstairs toilet, decked also with samples from as much as T could snap in 15 minutes at the Parisian namesake before he had to leave).
Canada introduced us to baseball. It's MUCH MORE FUN than cricket (what isn't?) and the rules take only 5 minutes to explain - followed by about three days of "Oh, I forgot to say that ...". Thos even played. Last year's missive seems to include many remarks of uncharacteristically athletic flavour, so what have we this year? Martin went skiiiiing with grandparents (claims he did ski, but frankfurters and chips loom large in his memories) and had a shot at the county badminton trials. Together T and M went cycling through the Suffolk hills on M's first grown-up bike, counting I-Spy points for horse-brasses and reaching a grand total of over three hundred spotted in two days. T is into fantasy cycling: new paint and new gears but almost no miles - just 4 days (and 3 soakings) In the Cotswolds.
A musical year, though. Owen is a stalwart of the church choir, and he and Jo did the Creation from scratch. (Discount their modest disclaimers that they had a little help.) Half a dozen Joish concerts included a solo - only four bars1, but what bars - and Owen has just taken Grade 2 piano. He and Martin have now taken up the saxophone and piano accordion, respectively, and our neighbours wish us a peaceful new year. On more modest lines, T taught the local Woodcraft folk a couple of morris dances to take to Italy with them, where the hills were briefly alive with the sound of mouth-organs playing Bean-Setting and Country Gardens.
For Owen, above all, The Year of the Sartorial Son. Pink cardigans! Rolled-up sleeves on the smart white jacket! A hedgehog hair-do (?headgehog?). And to everyone's surprise, 0 even got T to buy some more elegant clothing. For Martin, Fimo Factory Year: monsters big and little, fridge-door ducks and birthday candle-holders, even Nessie. Also an explosion of natural history, fuelled by other grandparents' introducing him to microscopy - not to mention the selling-off of his school's unwanted science books, which he seems to have bought entire, from 'Fun with Physiology' to 'A Zoo on Your Window-Ledge', with its helpful account of how to make, you guessed It, stick-insect cages.
Happy Christmas and a peaceful new year -
Thomas Jo Owen Martin Freya (meow)
(not to mention Cbop and Cbip).